Distributed systems involve loosely coupled nodes connected over a network that share distributed memory. This architecture allows for horizontal scaling but introduces complexity around communication, errors, security, and coordination across nodes. While monolithic architectures can suffer from premature optimization, distributed systems require high skills from developers to effectively handle asynchronous communication, errors, monitoring, and other challenges. Ultimately, there is no single right way to design distributed systems - it depends on balancing performance, costs, and complexity for the particular application.